expressionsidiomsphrase-requests
It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.
— Muhammad Ali
I'm very fascinated by this quote, so I'm looking for expressions/idioms that are roughly equivalent to it. The one I'm looking for would be shorter and can be easily used in conversation.
In common usage, infrastructure often is used unqualified to refer to good physical conditions in a community (as, for example, "Our town has the infrastructure to support your robot factory!"), although it implies little or nothing about tax, economic, and labor conditions. Of course one can also say "Their infrastructure is awful!"; that is, "good" is not an inherent quality of infrastructure.
Note, infrastructure is "The basic facilities, services and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society."
Regarding linguee.com, their "About" page clearly says, "there is no other technology anywhere else in the world that compares with Linguee", so obviously you should keep using it. :) They also assert that the translations they provide (which, if I understand correctly, are in this case English to German) are human-made (or at least human-moderated). In comparing the English and German, it seems that the connotation you suggested for the German word (i.e. "conditions necessary for a business idea to work out") do not hold up in these translations; for example, "worst imaginable conditions" going to "denkbar schlechten Rahmenbedingungen".
I think cook someone's goose and spike someone's guns come closest in meaning.
cook someone's goose: if you cook someone's goose, you do something that spoils their plans and prevents them from succeeding.
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/cook+goose
Note: There is also "(someone's) goose is cooked" version. Apparently, it is more common.
spike someone's guns: To frustrate a person's efforts or designs; to undercut, to render helpless.
There are also other similar idioms that you can use depending on the context:
Note: You also mentioned the idiom trip someone up in your question which is partially what you are asking. But it doesn't necessarily indicate that you are hindering someone's success.
[with object] (trip someone up) Detect or expose someone in a mistake or inconsistency:
the man was determined to trip him up on his economics
Note 2: If you want to use a career related phrase, you can consider ruin someone's career.
Also, this Ngram result might give an idea how common these phrases are. (I didn't include "stand in someone's way" because it has other broader senses)
Best Answer
I believe this quote1 can be paraphrased as
Somewhat to my surprise, this phrase (and the similar It's the little things that trip you up) doesn't appear in common lists of idioms, but the set phrase is fairly common, and I find it in Google Books back to 1971.
A typical usage would be
Or this blog post, titled "It's the Little Things that Wear You Down", about the large impact of getting rid of small household irritants.
This phrase is sometimes associated directly with the quote you reference (and Ali):
(Source)
1It's probably worth noting that Muhammad Ali did not actually coin the original line; it has been around for at least a hundred years, although the original irritant in the shoe was a grain of sand. See Quote Investigator for more on the quote's origins.
Edited to add that "It's the little things..." can have many different endings, e.g. It's the little things that get you down, It's the little things that really get me, It's the little things that will drive you crazy, etc. It's sometimes also used as an exhortation: Don't let the little things get to you and so forth.